Tutorial Match play Lists I often Use

that looks like an horrifically boring list, even if it might be effective

 

You never have enough engines on the field. And kroak needs them both for summoning and mortalwounding.

 

Are they though? Most summons will still be yet more skinks and razordons, with the occasional skink (star)priest to grab an objective. It might be varied if all of our summoning options where actually viable, but they're not..

 

My point was more that skinks & razordons are the only things that can viably be summoned frequently. Especially within 1 given match they're really the only ones to be summoned multiple times. Everything else is either expensive enough that it rarely will be summoned more than once, and involves your Slann doing nothing for 2-3 turns to gather up the points, or is stupidly niche (like your example with saurus, I'm honestly kind of amazed it's managed to find a use in a tournament, as a sidenote, wouldn't 30 skinks have been more effective? It'd cost the same).
And yes, technicly anything will have some niche in which that particular unit would be brilliant, I'm sure we can find a reason to summon Kroxigor or saurus guard as well if we try hard enough. But If that situation is only really applicable once every 50 matches and the rest consist of throwing skinks at an opponent it doesn't really count (and yes I'm exaggerating a bit ).

It's not surprising though, it's rather difficult to avoid situations where there isn't a very obvious option that's most efficient for something like summoning. The old mechanic of them being summoned with spells did have advantages in that aspect by including more than just point-costs.

 

I have to agree with @LizardWizard on this. To gather summon points you pay a high price. The thing with different units is that a unit isn’t good or bad. It all depends on the situation.
And ofcourse some situations happen more often than others, thats why people stamp one unit bad.
But having the flexibility to adapt to the army im facing is a real winner for us. For example I brought a unit of terradons, if I would face a celestant of dracoth with staunch defender. Or have to options to summon a warden if my slann is under threat. While in most games, I dont need to have a warden, and certainly didnt want to pay the points for that. Best example might be the Starpriest, with the -1 to hit. It used to be an autoinclude for the possibility you would face an army with extra stuff in 6+. Now I can just have it in the bank. Saving me 80 points on other stuff if it would be obsolete to have a starpriest

 

Also 20 saurus can be good for driving an opponent of an objective. They can do ‘some’ damage. Ofcourse a razordon could probably do more damage, but you mis out on the amount of ‘models’.

 

Meh, I still think it'l end up being a fairly boring list but that's largely due to the way summoning works in conjunction with how "short" AoS games are (short as in, only 5 turns).

Issue is that most situations will have a fairly Obvious optimal summon option, so you just pick that. Then some of those situations will (obviously) be vastly more common than others. And with only 5 turns chances are you (generally) won't see a whole lot of different situations in the same match. Then to top it off the way summoning, and generating points, currently works is fairly deterministic with relativly few significant trade-offs (god our slann need an actual lore). It all becomes a tad too predictable.


Also as a sidenote @LizardWizard, if you're playing in the top 25 they are niche games. You're playing in at the top 1% (or whatever it is), and generally speaking in any game the top 1% plays different from the common plebs on account of them being way better. You might ultimatly set the meta as the average players try to emulate your strategies, but generally speaking high level play tends to be different from the average. As evident by how frequent you summon saurus warriors. Just look around on this forum at how badly warriors are viewed outside of a sunclaw and not even in a horde, I'd be surprised if other players would come even close to your number of 1 in 5 games.

 

I have the sneaky suspicion that is a lot less common at "normal" levels of play as the 20 bases are a utility aspect, and not even a particularly Obvious one. And utility tends to be overlooked at lower levels of play in favor of shiny stat-lines that do loads of damage (or have loads of defenses)

Though that might explain why your experience revolves less around spamming skinks and razordons while most other remarks I see around here do tend to heavily favor those. The fact that those are super cost efficient is far less important if you actually have the skill (and oppertunity) to use whatever utility a unit might bring besides its raw stats and opens up a load of options to be commonly viable (or at least usefull).

 

Well that's one way of looking at some of the undertuned units we currently have

 

That 50mm bases on krox,. Damnnn

 

Thats why I played them in the TQ. And look out sir. Also the healing helps them alot!

But most off all, just love the models!

 

Why javalins and why a unit of 20? Even if they get into range it's not like they'l achieve much. Why not pick say a unit of handlers instead?